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THE TRENT AFFAIR 



AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 



BY 
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 



" ' T is Fifty Years Since.'' 



BOSTON 
1912 



THE TREiNT AFFAIR 

AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 



BY 
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 



" 'Tis Fifty Years Since.'' 



BOSTON 

191 2 



^4 



(o'^ 



l\7S^ 



. [The following paper, prepared for the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety, submitted and in part read at its November meeting, 191 1, ap- 
pears in the printed Proceedings of that Society, vol. xlv. pp. 35-76. 
A few changes in language have been made, and a paragraph added 
in this issue. In the Proceedings it is accompanied (pp. 76-159) by letters 
on the Trent Affair, drawn from the correspondence of Charles Francis 
Adams, then Minister to Great Britain, and from other sources.] 



: ' »9I4 



THE TRENT AFFAIR. 



As, doubtless, all of us have had frequent occasion to observe, 
there are few occurrences which in their relative connection 
with other occurrences or with things at large do not assume 
with the lapse of time aspects strangely different. The passage 
of fifty years is a great dissolvent and clarifier. The interna- 
tional incident, still memorable, known as the affair of the 
Trent and the seizure by Captain Charles Wilkes, then com- 
manding the San Jacinto, of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, the two 
Confederate envoys, occurred on the 8th of November, and 
the fiftieth recurrence of that date accordingly came about 
yesterday. 

One living in those times who had then attained even a degree 
of maturity, that is, any man or woman now over sixty-five 
years of age, cannot but retain, if American, a distinct recol- 
lection of the incident, and a general memory at least of the 
excitement caused by it, and the intense interest with which 
every stage of its development was awaited. For such, however, 
it is necessary also to bear in mind that the present great major- 
ity, those of the younger generations, do not have this vivid 
personal recollection of the events of that memorable period, 
and there are many whose ideas concerning the affair of the 
Trent are vague and, to say the least, unsettled. For instance, 
as an illustration in point let me relate an incident told me by 
my friend Mr. Moorfield Storey. Among the guests on one 
occasion at Mr. Storey's house was an intelligent young fellow, 
either a recent Harvard graduate or, possibly, in one of the older 
classes. He was also in a general way not ill informed, as men 
of that age go. Incidentally a reference was made to the as- 
sault of Preston Brooks on Charles Sumner in the United States 



Senate chamber, — very fresh and vivid in Mr. Storey's 
recollections. To his utter surprise this young man listened 
with interest, and then asked for further details, observing 
that he knew nothing about it, never having heard of the 
occurrence before! To us who lived in those times, such a 
lack of information upon really momentous historical events 
seems incomprehensible, almost astounding. Yet from per- 
sonal experience I have reason to believe the case was in no 
wise exceptional. 

With us of the Civil War generation the events of that period 
are, on the contrary, in the language of Milton, ''writ large." 
They stand forth in memory, belittling where they do not 
altogether obscure the historical episodes of very considerable 
importance which have since occupied attention. It is, there- 
fore, always peculiarly interesting to us — now lingerers from 
that bygone generation — to look back on those events through 
the perspective of fifty years, and, recalling our feelings at the 
time, note the different aspects those events now wear. Few are 
more well worth consideration from this point of view than the 
episode I have referred to, — the taking of the Confederate 
envoys, Messrs. Mason and Slidell, from the steamer Trent 
on November 8, 1861. 

In pursuance of my present purpose, I do not propose to 
enter into any detailed narrative of what then occurred. So 
far as the facts are concerned, the incident has taken its place, 
and presumably its proper place, in recorded history. The 
field too has been thoroughly gleaned; and, though nearly 
twenty years have passed since the publication of Mr. Thomas 
L. Harris's very thorough monograph entitled The Trent 
AJfair, little light of value has in the intervening time been 
cast on the subject. The conclusions therein reached have 
been revised in no essential respect. In his Life of William H. 
Seward, Mr. Frederic Bancroft devotes to this incident his 
thirty-third chapter, and in that gives a thoroughly un- 
prejudiced and critical account of what occurred. Reading 
it afresh, Mr. Bancroft's narrative strikes me as judicial; 
and, moreover, so far as Seward is concerned, while he in it 
nothing extenuates, he sets down naught in malice. 

Before entering in the casual way now proposed on my 
retrospect, I must first submit certain broad conclusions in 



regard to the affair, and the influences and conditions under 
which it occurred. 

Speaking generally, I think I do not remember in the whole 
course of the half-century's retrospect — equal to the period 
which elapsed between the surrender at Yorktown and the 
presidency of Andrew Jackson — any occurrence in which the 
American people were so completely swept off their feet, for 
the moment losing possession of their senses, as during the 
weeks which immediately followed the seizure of Mason and 
Slidell. Everything combined to this result. In the first place, 
when the incident occurred the community was in a wholly over- 
wrought nervous condition. On the 8th of November, 1 86 1, seven 
months had elapsed since the firing on Fort Sumter, and nearly 
four months since the mortifying Bull Run experience. It was 
exactly a year from the election to the presidency of Abraham 
Lincoln. That election, it will be remembered, had been 
immediately followed by the initial movement of South Caro- 
lina in the direction of secession. Then followed the trying 
winter of i860 and 1861, during which State after State seceded, 
the war cloud in the South ever gathering, and assuming day 
by day a more threatening aspect. The five months which 
elapsed between the election of i860 and the firing on Fort 
Sumter were probably the most trying period, psychologically, 
this country has ever passed through. The inevitable was 
constantly assuming a more portentous shape. At last in 
April war broke out. Thus in November, 1861, the country 
had been on tenter-hooks, so to speak, for twelve entire months, 
and during the last six of those months one mortification and 
failure had followed sharp on another. The community, in a 
state of the highest possible tension, was constantly hoping 
for a successful coup somewhere and by someone executed in 
its behalf. It longed for a man who would do, taking the 
responsibihty of the doing. While it was in this state of 
mind, the telegraph one day announced that the United States 
sloop of war San Jacinto, under the command of Captain Wilkes, 
had arrived at Fortress Monroe, having on board the two Con- 
federate envoys. Mason and Slidell, taken on the high seas 
from the British mail steamer Trefit. At last the hour seemed 
come, and with it a man. By one now seeking an explanation 
of what then occurred, all this must be borne in mind. 



Thus worked up to the highest pitch of excitement, the 
feeling of the country had also been slowly fermenting to one 
of acute hostility towards Great Britain; and this for two rea- 
sons. In the first place, it had seemed as if, in view of its anti- 
slavery preachings during the last thirty years, and its some- 
what Pharisaic, better-than-thou attitude towards America 
as respects the negro and his condition. Great Britain had failed 
to evince that sympathy towards us which was expected be- 
cause of the Slaveholders' rebellion, and had, to say the least, 
done nothing to forward the cause of the Union in a crisis 
brought on by the aggressive action of the South. On the con- 
trary, the attitude of England in general had been sneering as 
well as adversely critical; and the tone of the London Times, 
in particular, — for the Times, still known as "The Thunderer," 
was recognized as the first and most influential newspaper in 
the world, — had been distinctly unsympathetic, not to say 
antagonistic and otherwise acutely irritating. WiUiam H. 
Russell, the famous Crimean War correspondent, was also 
at that time in this country, and his letters regularly appearing 
in the Times as "from our special correspondent" were repub- 
lished and read in America to an extent which can hardly 
now be understood. Anxiously waited for, and printed in 
extenso in all the leading journals, extracts from them were 
to be found in every paper in the land. Russell had been to 
a certain extent present at Bull Run, and a witness of our dis- 
grace. While his account of what he saw on that occasion 
was photographic and strictly correct, we none the less had 
become morbidly conscious that there was "a chiel amang [us] 
taking notes," and the "notes" he took when seen in "prent" 
caused a degree of irritation at this day diflficult to describe 
or overstate. Thus morbidly excited and intensely sensitive, 
the country was in a thoroughly unreasoning and altogether 
unreasonable condition, very necessary now to emphasize; for 
it needed only the occurrence of some accident to lead to a 
pronounced explosion of what can only be described as Anglo- 
phobia. Discouraged, we had in fact only begun to settle 
down to the conviction that a long and uncertain struggle was 
before us. With all conditions, therefore, explosive, so to 
speak, in character, the incident of the Trent came like a bolt 
from a clouded and lowering sky; but it was a shell exploding 



in a powder magazine rather than a spark falling in a mass of 
combustible matter. 

The course of events, briefly stated, was as follows: — Imme- 
diately after the firing upon Fort Sumter, Jefferson Davis, 
President of the then newly organized Confederate States, had 
sent out to Europe agents to forward the interests of the pro- 
posed nationality. These agents had there spent some seven 
months, accomplishing little. Disappointed at their failure, 
Davis determined upon a second and more formal mission. The 
new representatives were designated as "Special Commissioners 
of the Confederate States of America, near the Government" 
whether of Great Britain or of France, as the case might be. 
James Murray Mason of Virginia and John SHdell of Louisiana 
were selected, the first named for London, the second for Paris. 
Both, it will be remembered, had recenny been Senators of the 
United States, Slidell having withdrawn from the Senate Febru- 
ary 4, 1 86 1, immediately after the passage of the Ordinance of 
Secession by the State of Louisiana; while Mason, having 
absented himself about March 20, during the session of the 
Senate for executive business, did not again take his seat. 
Virginia seceded April 17, and Mason, together with several 
other Southern Senators, was in his absence expelled by formal 
vote (July 11) at the special session of the Thirty-Seventh 
Congress, which met under the call of President Lincoln, 
July 4, 1 86 1. Probably no two men in the entire South were 
more thoroughly obnoxious to those of the Union side than 
Mason and SHdell. The first was, in many and by no means 
the best ways, a typical Virginian. Very provincial and in- 
tensely arrogant, his dislike of New England, and especially of 
Massachusetts, was pronounced, and exceeded only by his 
contempt.^ It was said of him at the time that when trouble 

^ The course of subsequent events in no way mollified these antipathies. 
Writing from London to a daughter in Virginia thirteen months (April 5, 1866) 
after the delivery of Lincoln's second inaugural, he thus expressed himself: — 
"In my yaried intercourse with the world, I have met with some whom I held in 
disesteem, v/ith others in contempt, as unworthy, and some few who were essen- 
tially had; but, in looking back, I do not recognize that my feelings toward any 
such amounted to acrimony, or insuperable hate. Now it is otherwise. I confess, 
that toward every man or thing North, there has arisen within me a feeling of 
detestation that I cannot express or qualify, if I would. In the war they waged 
against us, they were demons — -in victory, they proved themselves fiends. There 
are, of course, individual exceptions I doubt not, but I have yet to learn of one 



8 

was brewing and he was invited to make a speech in Boston, 
he had replied that he would not again visit Massachusetts 
until he went there as an ambassador. Slidell, on the other 
hand, was considered one of the most astute and dangerous 
of all Confederate public characters. An intriguer by nature, 
unscrupulous in his political methods, he was credited with 
having fraudulently defeated, by secret manipulations, the 
Clay ticket in Louisiana in the 1844 presidential election, 
and was generally looked upon as the most dangerous person to 
the Union the Confederacy could select for diplomatic work 
in Europe.^ The first object of the envoys was to secure the 
recognition of the Confederacy. The ports of the Confederate 
States were then blockaded; but the blockade had not yet 
become really effective. The new envoys selected Charleston 
as their port of embarkation, and October 12 as its date. 
The night of the 12 th was dark and rainy, but with little 
or no wind, conditions altogether favorable for their purpose. 
They left Charleston on the little Confederate steamer Theo- 
dora, evaded the blockading squadron, and reached New 
Providence, Nassau, two days later, the 14th. It had been 
the intention of the envoys to take passage for Europe at 
Nassau on an English steamer; but, failing to find one which 
did not stop at New York, the Theodora continued her voyage 
to Cardenas in Cuba, whence the envoys and those accom- 
panying them proceeded overland to Havana. Arriving at 
Havana about the 2 2d of October, Messrs. Mason and Slidell 
remained there until the 7 th of November. They then em- 
prominent man there who has, since the rupture, expressed a sentiment, or evinced 
a feeling, that would not be held a disgrace to manhood elsewhere." The Public 
Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason, 581. 

1 W. H. Russell thus wrote of Mr. Slidell in a letter to the Times, which ap- 
peared in its issue of December 10, 1861 : — ■ "Mr. Slidell, whom I had the pleasure 
of meeting in New Orleans, is a man of more tact and he is not inferior to his 
colleague Mr. Mason in other respects. He far excels him in subtlety and depth, 
and is one of the most consummate masters of political manoeuvre in the States. 
He is what is here called a ' wire-puller ' — a man who unseen moves the puppets 
on the public stage as he lists — a man of iron will and strong passions, who 
loves the excitement of combinations, . . . and who in his dungeon [at Fort 
Warren], or whatever else it may be, would congpire with the mice against the cat 
sooner than not conspire at all. . . . Originally a northern man, he has thrown 
himself into the southern cause and staked his great fortune on the issue without 
hesitation, and with all the force of his intellect and character. And even he be- 
lieved that England must break the blockade for cotton." 



barked on the British steamer Trent, the captain of the Trent 
having full knowledge of their diplomatic capacity as envoys 
of an insurgent community, and giving consent to their embarka- 
tion. The Trent was a British mail packet, making regular 
trips between Vera Cruz, in the Republic of Mexico, and the 
Danish Island of St. Thomas. She was in no respect a blockade 
runner; was not engaged in commerce with any American port; 
and was then on a regular voyage from a port in Mexico, by 
way of Havana, to her advertised destination, St. Thomas, 
all neutral ports. At St. Thomas direct connection could be 
made with a line of British steamers running to Southampton. 
The envoys, therefore, when they left Havana, were on a neutral 
mail steamer, sailing under the British flag, on a schedule voyage 
between neutral points. 

At just that time the United States war steamer, San Jacinto, 
a first-class screw sloop mounting fifteen guns, was returning 
from a cruise on the western coast of Africa, where for twenty 
mon]^s she had been part of the African squadron engaged in 
suppressing the slave trade. She was commanded by Captain 
Wilkes, who had recently joined her. Returning by way of the 
Cape Verde Islands, Captain Wilkes there learned from the 
newspapers about the last of September of the course of public 
events m the United States, and rumors reached him of 
Confederate privateers, as they were then called, destroying 
American vessels in West India waters. He determined to 
make an effort at the capture of some of these " privateers." 
On October loth the San Jacinto reached the port of St. 
Thomas, and subsequently touched at Cierrfuegos on the south 
coast of Cuba. There Captain Wilkes learned, also from 
the newspapers, that the Confederate envoys were at that 
very time at Havana, and about to take passage for Southamp- 
ton. Reaching Havana on the 28th of October, the commander 
of the San Jacinto further learned that the commissioners were 
to embark on the steamer Trent, scheduled to leave Havana 
on the 7th of November. Captain Wilkes then conceived the 
design of intercepting the Trent, exercising the right of search, 
and making prisoners of the envoys. No question as to his 
right to stop, board, and search the Trent seems to have entered 
the mind of Captain Wilkes. He did, however, take into his 
confidence his executive officer, Lieutenant Fairfax, disclosing 



lO 

to him his project. Lieutenant Fairfax entered, it is said, a 
vigorous protest against the proposed action, and strongly- 
urged on Captain Wilkes the necessity of proceeding with great 
caution unless he wished to provoke international difficulties, 
and not impossibly a war with Great Britain. He then suggested 
that his commanding officer consult an American Judge at 
Key West, an authority on maritime law; which, however, 
Captain Wilkes declined to do. Leaving Key West on the 
morning of November 5th, Captain Wilkes directed the course 
of the San Jacinto to what is known as the Bahama Channel, 
through which the Trent would necessarily pass on its way to 
St. Thomas, and there stationed himself. About noon on the 
8th of November, the Trent hove in sight, and when she had 
approached sufficiently near the San Jacinto, a round shot 
was fired athwart her course; the United States flag was run up 
at the mast head at the same time. The approaching vessel 
showed the English colors, but did not check her speed or 
indicate a disposition to heave to. Accordingly, a few instants 
later, a shell from the San Jacinto was exploded across her bows. 
This had the desired effect. The Trent immediately stopped, 
and a boat from the San Jacinto proceeded to board her. It 
is unnecessary to go into the details of what then occurred. For 
present purposes it is sufficient to say that the two envoys, 
together with their secretaries, were identified and forcibly 
removed, being taken on board the San Jacinto; which, with- 
out interfering with the mails or otherwise subjecting the 
Trent to search, then laid its course for Fortress Monroe. 
Arriving there on the 15th, news of the capture was imme- 
diately flashed over the country. The Trent, on the other hand, 
proceeded to St. Thomas, where her passengers were trans- 
ferred to another steamer, and completed the voyage to South- 
ampton. They arrived and the report of the transaction was 
made public in Great Britain November 27th, twelve days 
after the arrival of the San Jacinto at Fortress Monroe, and the 
publication of the news of the arrest in the United States. 

Such were the essential facts in the case, and, while a storm 
of enthusiastic approval was sweeping over the northern part 
of the United States in the twelve days between November 
15th and November 27th, a storm of indignation of quite equal 
intensity swept over Great Britain between November 27th 



II 

and the close of the year.^ Most fortunately there was no ocean 
cable in those days, and the movement of the Atlantic steamers 
was comparatively slow. Accordingly the first intimations of 
the commotion caused in Great Britain by the action of Captain 
Wilkes did not reach America until the arrival of the Hansa 
at New York, December 12. Strange as it now seems, there- 
fore, almost an entire month had elapsed between the arrival 
of the San Jacinto at Fortress Monroe (November 15) and the 
receipt in America (December 12) of any information as to 
the effect of the seizure of the envoys on the British temper. 
A most important fact to be now borne in mind. 

In reading the accounts of what occurred in America between 
November 15 and December 26, and seeing the recorded utter- 
ances of persons whose names carried authority, it is now most 
curious to observe the confusion of idea which seemed to exist 
as to the principles of international law involved, and the ap- 
parent utter inability of all concerned to exercise their reason 
to the extent of preserving consistency of thought or action. 
The affair was looked at from diverse and several points of view ; 
and the point of view implied a great deal. The situation re- 
minds one, in fact, of Browning's poem of "The Ring and the 
Book," where, it will be remembered, the poet approaches 
the mystery from the point of view of each participant in it, 

— whether the woman who was murdered, the husband who 
murdered her, the counsel of the one and of the other, the 
gossip of one half of Rome and the other half of Rome, and 
finally from the standpoint of the Pope. So, to understand 
what was then said and done, the status and capture of the 
Confederate envoys has to be looked at from the Confederate 
point of view, from the Union point of view, from the English 

^ Two exceptionally well-informed Americans, long resident in Great Bx-itain, 
then wrote, the one from London to Mr. Seward, and the other from Edinburgh 
to his uncle, a citizen of New York: — "There never was within memory such a 
burst of feeling as has been created by the news of the boarding of the [Trent]. 
The people are frantic with rage, and were the country polled, I fear that 999 men 
out of a thousand would declare for immediate war. Lord Palmerston cannot^/ 
resist the impulse if he would;" the other, under the same date, November 29: — 
"The excitement consequent upon the insult to the British flag by the U. S. 
Frigate, San Jacinto, has entirely monopolized the public mind. I have never 
seen so intense a feeling of indignation exhibited in my life. It pervades all 
classes, and may make itself heard above the wiser theories of the Cabinet officers." 

— War Records, Series II. 11. 1107, 1131. 



12 

point of view, and, primarily, from the Captain Charles Wilkes 
point of view. Seen through the perspective of fifty years, it 
may now with reasonable assurance be asserted that, in the 
controversy which ensued, the United States did not have, and 
never had, in reality, a justifying leg to stand upon, and least 
of all was there any possible justification for the course pursued 
by Captain Wilkes. In the first place, Wilkes, commanding a 
United States ship of war, had not been in communication with 
his government for months. He had received no instructions; 
he was not even officially advised of the existence of a blockade; 
and only through the newspapers and current gossip did he 
know of the attitude his own government had assumed towards 
the so-called Confederacy. According to his own statement 
subsequently made, he did have some treatises on interna- 
tional law in the cabin of the San Jacinto, and he consulted 
them.^ From these he satisfied himself that accredited en- 
voys were "contraband"; but he ignored the fact that the 
Confederacy had not been recognized by the United States 
Government, or by any foreign government, and that the 
so-called "envoys" were merely "private gentlemen of dis- 
tinction," citizens of certain States then in insurgency, trying 
to effect a transit to foreign countries. They were unques- 
tionably embarked under a neutral flag, upon a mail steamer 
making its regular passage from one neutral port to another. 
Nevertheless, pro Jiac vice, Captain Wilkes invested the en- 
voys in question with an official character which his govern- 
ment distinctly refused to allow them, and then proceeded 
on the assumption that ambassadors were "embodied des- 
patches," to exercise on the high seas a right of search of 
a most questionable character; and, in so doing, he further 
constituted himself, in the person of his subordinate, a Prize 
Court, adjudicating on the deck of a neutral ship forcibly 
halted in its passage as to what personages should be seized, 

^ "When I heard at Cienfuegos on the south side of Cuba of these commis- 
sioners having landed on the Island of Cuba and that they were at the Havana 
and would depart in the English steamer on the yth of November, I determined 
to intercept them and carefully examined all the authorities on international 
law to which I had access, viz., Kent, Wheaton and Vattel, besides various de- 
cisions of Sir William Scott and other judges of the admiralty court of Great 
Britain which bore upon the rights of neutrals and their responsibilities." Official 
report of Captain Wilkes to the Secretary of the Navy. War Records, Series II. 
II. 1098. 



13 

what persons and property should be exempted from seiz- 
ure, as to how far the process of search should be carried, 
and generally what course under the conditions given should 
be pursued. Accordingly, while forcible possession was taken 
of the persons of the two envoys, no inquiry whatever was 
made as to their despatch bags, which, when the purpose of 
the procedure was suspected, had been handed over by the 
Commissioners to the British mail agent, and been by him 
deposited in his mail-room. They were subsequently in 
due course dehvered to the agents of the Confederacy in 
England. 

Incidentally it may here be observed that this proceeding 
on the part of Commander Williams, the mail agent in ques- 
tion, was in plain violation both of recognized British principles 
and precedents regulating the obligations of neutrals as also of 
the Queen's proclamation of the previous May; for that ordi- 
nance specifically warned all British subjects against ''carrying 
officers, soldiers, despatches . . . for the use or service of 
either of the said contending parties." An English publicist 
of recognized authority was, moreover, at that very time pro- 
nouncing the conveyance of despatches a "service" of the 
"most noxious and hostile character." Clearly, then. Com- 
mander Williams by the acceptance of these despatches, know- 
ing them to be such, from a recognized envoy of one of the 
belligerents, gravely compromised the steamer Trent as well as 
himself. On this point there was no room for doubt; but, on 
the other hand, every Cunard steamer which crossed the Atlan- 
tic — and no others crossed it then — carried despatches from 
the other belligerent, officially received and delivered as such, 
and this not between neutral ports, but between New York or 
Boston and Liverpool. Indeed, if the carrying of despatches 
and envoys had been disallowed, in strict accordance with the 
letter of the proclamation of May, it would have been neces- 
sary at that time for the United States Government to have 
installed an armed ocean mail and passenger service of its own. 
It cannot be denied that, as the British authorities laid the law 
down, and Captain Wilkes put it in practical operation, the 
ocean situation was mixed. Or, as an American pubhcist writ- 
ing at the time, but without the slightest sense of suppressed 
humor, observed, "it must be admitted that the subject is an 



H 

embarrassing one." ^ In point of fact it was a farrago of ab- 
surdities, contradictions and incongruities, over which learned 
men pondered and young girls prattled,^ with results about 
equally satisfactory.^ 

Recurring from this digression to what occurred November 
8th in the Bahama Channel, the officer deputed for the work 
by Captain Wilkes, acting under his instruction, thus, it ap- 
peared, arrested and seized only the " embodied despatches " ; the 
despatches themselves were, it would seem, not made matter 
even of inquiry. As to this theory of "embodied despatches" 
in the persons of "private gentlemen of distinction," known 
by general fame to be the agents of certain States in insurrec- 
tion and an admitted "belligerent" but not as yet a recognized 
nationality, that was a figment of international law for which 
no precedent could be found in the treatises, devised pro hac 
vice by Captain Charles Wilkes, U. S. N. 

Dismissing for the moment the extraordinary international 
law propositions involved, and recurring to the Wilkes point 

1 Dana, Wheaton, 659 n. 

^ Rhodes, History, iii. 522 n. 

^ The quite unintelHgible and somewhat ludicrous state of what is termed 
Law, of the International variety, so far as the topic here in question is concerned, 
is presented in a concrete shape in Moore's Digest, vn. 768-779. The authorities 
are there cited, and the discussions of the Trent precedent referred to. The diffi- 
culty seems to arise from the attempt seriously made to apply the principles laid 
down by Vattel, etc., and the precedents established by Lord Stowell to present 
conditions. The existence of modern lines of common-carrier transportation of 
passengers, merchandise and mails under neutral flags between points not actu- 
ally blockaded — lines like the Peninsula and Oriental, the Cunard and the 
White Star — seems not to have occurred to the publicists; while in fact the 
applying to the ships of such lines the rules under which Captain Wilkes thought 
he proceeded, and the application of which Mr. Seward afterwards gravely dis- 
cussed, is hardly less opposed to reason and common sense than would be the atti- 
tude and efforts of a tailor who endeavored to adjust the dress of a seven-year- 
old boy to the body and limbs of the same boy when grown to be a man of un- 
precedented size. In each case the attempt is, or would be, unfortunate, and 
lead inevitably to results unexpected if not impossible. This apparently is the 
one real lesson the world derived from the Trent affair. It seems to be ques- 
tionable, however, whether either the statesmen at the time took in the fact or 
the publicists since have realized it, and the consequent utter futility of what they 
attempted. Let the investigator substitute Lusitania for Trent, and consider 
what would necessarily result. To-day, the procedure of Captain Wilkes would, 
if of possible occurrence, be justly looked upon as showing prima facie evidence 
of insanity in the case of a naval officer responsible for it. Its single possible 
justification by his government would be found in Juvenal : 

Hoc volo, sicjubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. 



15 

of view, it is obvious that today any such action as that then 
taken by him would on the part of a naval officer be simply 
inconceivable. A similar hypothetical case needs only to be 
suggested in connection with the hostihties now going on in 
the Mediterranean between the Kingdom of Italy and the 
Ottoman Empire. Such a thing as a United States mail steamer 
running between New York, Gibraltar and Alexandria may 
not now exist, but it is supposable; and in such case the flag 
would certainly be found to signify something as respects 
personages as well as mail-bags. The celebrated Koszta case 
of more than half a century ago, though not a precedent strictly 
in point, would be revived in memory, and the spirit therein 
displayed again invoked. The conduct of a commander of a 
United States armed ship of superior force who, chancing to 
be in those waters, at once intervened, and forcibly "rescued" 
both mail-bags and persons from those who had thus exercised 
an alleged right of search and seizure, would be promptly 
approved and sustained. But, under the conditions I have 
referred to as prevailing in this country in the autumn and 
early winter of 1861, Captain Wilkes' conduct was officially 
approved by certain of those in authority, especially by the 
Secretary of the Navy and by the United States House of 
Representatives. It was even contended by high authorities 
that his acts were in substantial accordance with well-estab- 
lished principles of international law, to which, of course, 
when our turn came, we would yield a cheerful and graceful 
acquiescence. In other words, just fifty years later, the 
contentions and war of 181 2 were on our part all a mistake; 
the British attitude at that time was correct; and the right 
of search, arrest and impressment were at last by us fully 
conceded! 

Such was the logical aspect of the matter from the Wilkes 
point of view. Next perhaps to be considered in this cool 
semi-centennial perspective light are the popular, the official 
and the juristic points of view then assumed. So doing really 
now makes one who then lived and actively participated feel 
a little foolish; there is, however, a discipline, and even lesson 
perhaps, in a remorseless retrospect. 

Personally, I have a vivid recollection of the day when the 
news of the seizure was flashed to Boston, and hurriedly plac- 



i6 

arded on the newspaper bulletin boards.^ A youthful legal 
practitioner, I was then a man of twenty-six. I had studied, 
or made an at least honest pretence of so doing, in the office 
of Richard H. Dana, Jr. Mr. Dana was deemed as high an 
authority on maritime law as there was at the American bar. 
Reading the announcement on the bulletin board, I hurried 
up to liis office, and communicated the startling news. Well 
do I remember his reception of it. His face lighted up, and, 
clapping his hands with satisfaction over the tidings, he ex- 
pressed his emphatic approval of the act, adding that he would 
risk his "professional reputation" on its legality. And this 
was the view universally expressed and generally accepted. 

The San Jacinto, having put into Fortress Monroe on the 
15th of November, was, for various reasons, ordered to pro- 
ceed at once to New York, and thence to Boston; there to 
deliver its prisoners for safe keeping. Captain Wilkes anchored 
his ship in Boston harbor on the 24th of November, and two 
days later a dinner was given him and his officers at the Revere 
House, the Hon. J. Wiley Edmands presiding. Mr. Edmands, 
prominent among the solid business men of Boston of that 
period, lived at Newton and was treasurer of the Pacific Mills; 
a Webster Whig in politics, he had been a member of the Thirty- 
third Congress. The speakers on this occasion seemed to 
vie with each other in establishing a record from which there- 
after it would be impossible to escape. For instance, John A. 
Andrew, then Governor of Massachusetts, a man really great 
but of somewhat impulsive disposition, had been present in 
the office of the Secretary of the Navy when the news of the 
seizure came in. Literally swept off his feet, he had then 
sprung upon a chair and been prominent in the tumult of 
cheering which followed the announcement. He now at this 
public dinner^ declared that Captain Wilkes had shown "not 
only wise judgment, but [his act was marked by] manly and 
heroic success." He referred to it as "one of the most 



1 Saturday, November 16. On the afternoon of that day the following de- 
spatch was sent from Washington: "The intelligence of the capture of Slidell 
and Mason has diffused the greatest possible joy among all the citizens, including 
the Government officials from the President down to the humblest messenger." 

2 An account of the affair will be found in the Boston Evening Transcript, 
November 27, 186 1. 



17 

illustrious services that had made the war memorable"; and 
then most unnecessarily capped the cHmax of indiscretion by 
informing a delighted audience "that there might be noth- 
ing left [in the episode to] crown the exultation of the Ameri- 
can heart, Commodore Wilkes fired his shot across the bows of 
the ship that bore the British Lion at its head." On the same 
occasion George T. Bigelow, then Chief Justice of Massachu- 
setts, committed himself to an almost though not quite similar 
extent. First he voiced the very prevalent feehng already 
referred to, saying: — "In common with all loyal men of the 
North, I have been sighing, for the last six months, for some 
one who would be willing to say to himself, 'I will take the 
responsibility'; and who would not only say this, but when 
the opportunity offered would take the responsibility." The 
Chief Justice of our Supreme Court then went on to de- 
clare that "Commodore Wilkes acted more from the noble 
instincts of his patriotic heart, than from any sentence he 
read from a law book"; adding that, under such circum- 
stances, "a man does not want to ask counsel, or 'to con- 
sult judges upon his duty; his heart, his instinct, tells him 
what he ought to do," Well might the London Times in com- 
menting on the affair observe shortly after — "These are wild 
words from lawyers." Captain Wilkes then, in language 
indicative of singular confusion of thought, said that before 
he had decided on his course, he had examined the authorities, 
and satisfied himself that these so-called envoys had none of 
the rights attaching to such functionaries when properly ap- 
pointed; and, concluding that it was within his function to 
capture written despatches, assumed consequently that he had 
a right to take from under a neutral flag personages of dis- 
tinction as the embodiment of despatches. 

At Washington the Secretary of the Navy next addressed a 
congratulatory letter to Captain Wilkes on the "great public 
service" he had rendered, giving to his proceeding the "em- 
phatic approval of this department." He, however, took 
pains to insist that the forbearance of the commander of the 
San Jacinto in this instance in not seizing the Trent and send- 
ing it into port for adjudication by a Prize Court "must by 
no means be permitted to constitute a precedent hereafter for 
the treatment of any case of similar infraction of neutral obli- 



gations."' In his annual official report a few days later, Secre- 
tary Welles further stated that the "prompt and decisive 
action of Captain Wilkes on this occasion merited and received 
emphatic approval." On Monday, December 2, Congress 
assembled, and before the close of the first day's session Mr. 
Lovejoy, of Illinois, offered a joint resolution thanking Captain 
Wilkes, "for his brave, adroit and patriotic conduct in the 
arrest and detention of the traitors, James M, Mason and 
John Slidell." This resolution was passed by a unanimous 
vote; and, furthermore, the President was requested to present 
to Captain Wilkes "a gold medal with suitable emblems and 
devices, in testimony of the high sense entertained by Congress 
of his good conduct," etc.^ As to the irresponsible outpourings 
and journalistic utterances of those delirious three weeks, it is 
no exaggeration to say that, read to-day, they are more sug- 
gestive of the incoherences of the inmates of an insane asylum 
than of any well-considered expression of the organs of a sober 
and policed community, — a community which half a century 
only before had gone to war in defence of the great principles 
of immunity from ocean search, and seamen's rights. 

But, most noticeable and, perhaps, most suggestive of all 
the phases of that madness, were the utterances of the publi- 
cists, the supposed authorities on international law, and those 
who should have shown themselves the calmly poised leaders 
of public opinion. Here are some of them : — Theophilus 
Parsons was Dane professor of law at Harvard. Professor 
Parsons hurried into print with the following dictum: — "I 
am just as certain that Wilkes had a legal right to take Mason 
and Slidell from the Trent, as I am that our Government has 
a legal right to blockade the port of Charleston." Caleb 
Cushing, in the administration of Franklin Pierce Attorney- 
General of the United States, was a publicist, and a reputed 
legal authority. Mr. Cushing now wrote: — "To conclude 
then: In my judgment, the act of Captain Wilkes was one 
which any and every self-respecting nation must and would 
have done by its own sovereign right and power, regardless 
of consequences. It was an act which it cannot be denied 
Great Britain would have done under the same circumstances. 

^ War Records, Series II. 11. 11 13. 



19 

At the same time, it was an act amply justified by the principles 
and doctrines of international jurisprudence." 

I have already referred to R. H. Dana, and his exclamation 
on first hearing of Captain Wilkes' performance. Mr. Dana 
now wrote in an unsigned communication to the Boston Adver- 
tiser: — "In the present case, the mission [of the two envoys] 
is in its very nature necessarily and solely a mission hostile 
to the United States. It is treason within our municipal law, 
and an act in the highest degree hostile within the law of nations. 
If a neutral vessel intervenes to carry such persons on such a 
mission she commits an act hostile in the same degree. . . . We 
rather look to see Mr. Seward or Mr. Adams call the immediate 
attention of Her Majesty's Government to this violation of 
neutrality than to see Lord Lyons or Earl Russell addressing 
our Government on the subject." 

Finally, Edward Everett, formerly the representative of 
the country at the Court of St. James and an ex-Secretary 
of State, than whom no one stood higher in general estimation 
as an authority on topics of this character, thus publicly ex- 
pressed himself: — "You see that there is not the slightest 
ground for apprehension that there is any illegality in this 
detention of the mail packet; that the detention was perfectly 
lawful, the capture was perfectly lawful, their confinement in 
Fort Warren will be perfectly lawful, and as they will no doubt 
be kept there in safety until the restoration of peace — which 
we all so much desire — we may, I am sure, cordially wish 
them a safe and speedy deliverance." ^ 

^ In an address on the State of the Country, delivered before the Middlesex 
Mechanics' Association, at Lowell, on Tuesday evening, December 24, 1861. 

There has been a diversity of statement as respects Lewis Cass and his atti- 
tude and utterances in this connection. By some it has been asserted that he 
also was positive that the action of Captain Wilkes was justifiable, both on prin- 
ciple and by precedent. Such, however, was in no degree the case. On the 
contrary, the only recorded expression of opinion by Mr. Cass is refreshing 
from its correctness; its practical view of the matter also strongly coincided 
with what Lord Palmerston, as will next be seen, had said to Mr. Adams 
shortly before. The conclusions of General Cass are foimd in a letter addressed 
to Secretary Seward from Detroit, on the 19th of December, 1861. In his re- 
tirement from active political life, General Cass then wrote: — "Though I think 
it was justifiable upon the grounds laid down and acted upon by England, yet I 
considered it a most useless and unfortunate affair — an affair which from its 
evident importance should never have been undertaken by Captain Wilkes with- 
out express orders from his Government, and his interference is the more inex- 



20 

But the time at our disposal would not nearly admit of going 
through all the kaleidoscopic phases of tliis singular but most 
interesting and instructive international episode. The point 
of view now changes. We must imagine ourselves in London, 
and Englishmen. 

f' On Tuesday, November 12, four days after the actual seizure 
of Messrs. Mason and Shdell, but fifteen days before an inti- 
mation of it reached England, Mr. Adams, then representing 
the country at the Court of St. James, made this diary entry 
— "Received a famihar note from Lord Palmerston, asking 
me to call and see him between one and two o'clock." The 
note, of the briefest possible character, read as follows : — 

92 Piccadilly, 12 Nov., 1861. 
My dear Sir: 

I should be very glad to have a few minutes conversation with you; 
could you without inconvenience call upon me here today at any 
time between one and two. 

Yrs faithfully 

Palmerston. 

The Honbl. Mr. Adams. 

Though Mr. Adams had at this time been nearly six months 
in London, his official relations had been exclusively with 
Earl Russell; and, though he had met Lord Palmerston several 
times, and more than once been a guest at Cambridge House, 
their intercourse had been social only. A few days before 
Mr. Adams had been present at the Lord Mayor's dinner, and 
had been one of the speakers on that occasion. In his diary 
entry is the following: "The only marking speech being one 
from Lord Palmerston which had his customary shrewdness. 
He touched gently on our difficulties and at the same time 
gave it clearly to be understood that there is to be no inter- 

cusable as he states in his report that in his search into the authorities upon the 
law of nations he could find no such case decided and was brought to consider the 
rebel commissioners as the ' embodiment of despatches ' — I think is his phrase — 
in order to justify the arrest; a strange reason to be officially given for such a 
procedure. And what has amazed me more than anything else in this whole 
affair are the laudations bestowed upon Captain Wilkes for his courage in taking 
three or four unarmed men out of an unarmed vessel." War Records, Series II. 
II. 1132. This position evinced consistency also, as Cass, when Secretary of 
State, had clearly and fully laid down the American principles of neutral 
rights in a despatch, June 27, 1859, addressed to John Y. Mason, then Minister 
to France, and a brother of James M. Mason. 



21 

fprence for the sake of cotton." Shortly after, but before the 
news of the Trent affair arrived, Mr. Adams made the following 
further diary entry: — "In the evening Mrs. Adams und I 
went by invitation to Lady Palmerston's. A few persons only, 
after one of her dinners. We had been invited to dine our- 
selves, last Saturday, and are again invited for next Saturday 
evening. This civility is so significant that it must by no 
means be declined. ... I touched Lord Palmerston a little 
on the event of the day, [the burning of the Harvey Birch by 
the Confederate cruiser Nashville], and reminded him of the 
connection which the Nashville had with our former conver- 
sation. He seemed good-natured and rather desirous to get 
information as to grounds on which to act." The relations 
between the two men had accordingly thus far been of an 
altogether friendly character. The diary entry of November 
12 goes on as follows: — 

This (Lord Palmerston's note) took me by surprise, and I specu- 
lated on the cause for some time mthout any satisfaction. At one 
o'clock I drove from my house over to his, Cambridge House in 
Piccadilly. In a few minutes he saw me. His reception was very 
cordial and frank. He said he had been made anxious by a notice 
that a United States armed vessel ^ had lately put in to Southampton 
to get coal and supplies. It had been intimated to him that that 
object was to intercept the two men, Messrs. Mason and Slidell, 
who were understood to be aboard the British West India steamer 
expected to arrive tomorrow or next day. He had been informed 
that the Captain, having got gloriously drunk on brandy on Sunday 
had dropped down to the mouth of the river yesterday as if on the 
watch. He did not pretend to judge absolutely of the question 
whether we had a right to stop a foreign vessel for such a puq30se 
as was indicated. Even admitting that we might claim it, it was 
yet very doubtful whether the exercise of it in this way could lead 
to any good. The effect of it here would be unfavorable, as it would 
seem as if the vessel had come in here to be filled with coal and sup- 
plies, and the Captain had enjoyed the hospitality of the country 
in filling his stomach with brandy, only to rush out of the harbor 
and commit violence upon their flag. Neither did the object to be 

* The James Adger, commanded by Captain J. B. Marchant. In regard to this 
incident, see Charles Francis Adams (Am. Statesmen Series), 222-224; Records 
of Union and Confederate Navies, i. 128, 224; Adams, Studies: Military and 
Diplomatic, 394. 



22 

gained seem commensurate with the risk. For it was surely of no 
consequence whether one or two more men were added to the two 
or three who had already been so long here. They would scarcely 
make a difference in the action of the government after once having 
made up its mind. 

The remainder of this diary entry is long, and not germane 
to the present occasion. I, therefore, omit it. But the ex- 
treme significance of the intimation thus unofficially and pleas- 
antly conveyed was not apparent at the time; indeed it was 
not fully disclosed until half a century later. Mr. Adams 
never knew the motive cause of the interview he was describing, 
and consequently never appreciated the really kind purpose 
behind this most friendly action of the man at the head of the 
government to which he was accredited. It was an effort 
to forestall and prevent an international complication even 
more objectless than it was dangerous, a senseless wrangle over 
two men who were of no consequence anyway. 

To appreciate the true significance of the interview described 
in his diary by Mr. Adams it is necessary to bear in mind that 
it took place on the 12th of November, the Confederate envoys 
having been taken on the 8th from the Trent. On the day 
preceding his talk with Mr. Adams, Lord Palmerston, it now 
appears, had addressed the following letter to J. T. Delane, 
the editor of the Times: 

94, Piccadilly, November 11, 1861. 
My dear Delane: 

It may be useful to you to know that the Chancellor, Dr. Lush- 
ington, the three Law Officers, Sir G. Grey, the Duke of Somerset, 
and myself, met at the Treasury today to consider what we could 
properly do about the American cruiser come, no doubt, to search 
the West Indian packet supposed to be bringing hither the two South- 
ern envoys; and, much to my regret, it appeared that, according to 
the principles of international law laid down in our courts by Lord 
Stowell, and practised and enforced by us, a belligerent has a right 
to stop and search any neutral not being a ship of war, and being 
found on the high seas and being suspected of carrying enemy's 
despatches; and that consequently this American cruiser might, 
by our own principles of international law, stop the West Indian 
packet, search her, and if the Southern men and their despatches 
and credentials were found on board, either take them out, or seize 
the packet and carry her back to New York for trial.. Such being 



23 

the opinion of our men learned in the law, we have determined to 
do no more than to order the Phaeton frigate to drop down to Yar- 
mouth Roads and watch the proceedings of the American within 
our three-mile limit of territorial jurisdiction, and to prevent her 
from exercising within that limit those rights which we cannot dis- 
pute as belonging to her beyond that limit. 

In the meanwhile the American captain, having got very drunk 
this morning at Southampton with some excellent brandy, and 
finding it blow heavily at sea, has come to an anchor for the night 
within Calshot Castle, at the entrance of the Southampton river. 

I mention these things for your private information. 
Yours sincerely, 

Palmerston. 

And, the following day, immediately after his talk with Mr. 
Adams, he further wrote: — 

My dear Delane: 

I have seen Adams today, and he assures me that the American 
paddle-wheel was sent to intercept the Nashville if found in these 
seas, but not to meddle with any ship under a foreign flag. He said 
he had seen the commander, and had advised him to go straight home ; 
and he believed the steamer to be now on her way back to the United 
States. This is a very satisfactory explanation. 

Yours sincerely, 

Palmerston. 

While the opinion of the officers of the Crown referred to was 
no mystery at the time, and is mentioned, though in much 
more general language, by Spencer Walpole in his Life of Lord 
Russell (ii. 354-356), yet the statement here made of that 
opinion by Lord Palmerston is well calculated to excite sur- 
prise. It will be noticed that the officers referred to — the 
Lord Chancellor, Westbury, and Dr. Lushington being among 
them — are said to have laid it down as law that the belligerent 
had a right to stop and search any neutral, not being a ship 
of war, on the high seas, suspected of carrying enemy's de- 
spatches. Consequently, then, in this case, the Southern in- 
surgents having been granted belligerent rights, the San Jacinto 
might, on English principles of international law, stop the 
Trent, search her, and if the Southern men were on board, 
either do exactly what Captain Wilkes had already just done, 
— take them out, and then allow the packet to proceed on its 



24 

voyage, — or seize the packet and carry her to some American 
port for trial and adjudication as prize. 

Here is indeed another turn of the Trent kaleidoscope, — 
a British turn! That just half a century ago such an opinion 
as this should have been advanced as accepted international 
law seems incredible. It indicates clearly how confused, as 
well as archaic, the principles of that law were at the time in 
question in the minds of those supposed to be learned in it. No 
war involving maritime rights to any considerable extent had 
occurred since Waterloo. The precedents established in the 
EngUsh Prize Courts in the days of Napoleon's "Continental 
System" and the British "Orders in Council," and the prin- 
ciples then laid down, utterly regardless as they notoriously 
had been of the rights of neutrals, were held to be still law. 
Those precedents and rulings were of the most miscellaneous 
description and arbitrary character. Meanwhile, the world 
had progressed. It is, therefore, simply astounding to us in 
191 1 that the law officers of the Crown should in 1861 have 
advised her Majesty's government that an American ship- 
of-war might lie in the straits of Dover, and, having reason to 
suppose that an emissary of the Confederacy, carrying de- 
spatches, was on a certain steamer, — the Calais packet, for 
instance, — could stop the steamer in question, subject it to 
search, and either take out the envoy referred to, and his 
despatches, leaving the steamer then to complete its course, 
or could pronounce her a prize of war for violation of neutrahty, 
and send her into port for adjudication! Or, to put the case 
in a different way, difficulties of a revolutionary character 
have recently occurred in Mexico, and are now, as is well known, 
agitating Portugal. Is it supposable that a Mexican or Portu- 
guese man-of-war commissioned by the recognized govern- 
ment, rights of belUgerency having for reasons of commerce 
or humanity been conceded, — is it, I say, even remotely sup- 
posable that, under such circumstances, a Mexican or Portu- 
guese battleship could now lie in wait off Long Island on the 
course of the trans-Atlantic steamers, and, having sufficient 
reason to believe that either despatches were being carried 
in those steamers, or that a Mexican or Portuguese envoy was 
among its passengers, could proceed to stop and search the 
ocean-liner, forcibly arrest the persons in question, and with 



25 

them steam away, or, then and there, compel the ship — the 
Lusitania or the Oceanic, let us say — to abandon its voyage, 
and send it into a Mexican or Portuguese port for adjudication! ^ 
The thing is too absurd for a moment's consideration. Yet 
then it seems to have been laid down as the accepted law of 
Great Britain; and according to Lord Chancellor Westbury 
and Dr. Lushington, Mr. George Sumner, the brother of the 
Senator of the same name, was not wrong when at this time 
(November 22) he wrote to the New York Tribune that, "The 
act of Commodore Wilkes was in strict accordance with the 
principles of international law recognized in England, and in 
strict conformity with English practice." One American at 
least seems here to have then spoken correctly and by the 
book. He said "English principles" and "English practice"! 
If it was law and practice in Great Britain then, it was law 
and practice nowhere else; least of all in the United States. 

But was the position thus taken sound as a proposition of 
even British law? This is open to grave question; nor did it 
pass unchallenged at the time. The point was well put by the 
Duke of Argyll, himself a member of the British ministry, in a 
letter to Mr. Adams written on the 25th of the following Jan- 
uary.2 Referring to the objection subsequently made to the 
act of Captain Wilkes that the Trent was not taken into port 
for adjudication, he characterized it as one made on "a narrow 
and technical ground." He then proceeded as follows: "This 
is a very minor objection, tho' so far as it goes, a sound one. 
But the real objection I hold to be a much stronger one, viz., 
that a neutral vessel, with a bona fide, neutral destination, 

^ These very instances were at the time cited as possibilities by Earl Russell 
in his despatch to Lord Lyons, closing the discussion on the side of the British 
government. In addition thereto the following — "So also a Confederate vessel- 
of-war [e. g. the Alabama] niight capture a Cunard steamer on its way from 
Halifax to Liverpool, on the ground of its carrying despatches from Mr. Seward 
to Mr. Adams." It is difficult now of belief that in 1861 an experienced American 
naval officer should have undertaken to establish a precedent logically implying 
such obvious consequences, and this on his own initiative; that the most learned 
legal authorities in America should have unequivocally sustained him in such 
an act, insisting on its unquestionable legality, fairly surpasses beUef. Yet the 
evidence is conclusive that at the time American public opinion was well-nigh 
unanimous in support of the proposition, and had persuaded itself, or was per- 
suaded, that Great Britain should be held to a future strict responsibility and 
account for failing to give immediate and willing assent to it. 

2 See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Vol. 45, p. 137. 



26 

cannot contain contraband of war at all, and that civilians, 
especially, bound for a neutral country cannot, under any 
circumstances, be held to be subject to seizure as Contraband, 
I venture to aflEirm that no decision of any of our Judges, nor 
any act of our Government can be cited as inconsistent with 
this doctrine." 

This, even if advanced by a layman, was certainly good sense, 
and probably sound law. Admitting, however, that as a mere 
proposition of existing law, wise or not wise as a question of 
policy, the British precedents and practice were as laid down 
by the law-advisers of the Crown, if such a contingency as that 
of the Trent arose there was but one course to be pursued 
by any self-respecting nation. If such was once the law, 
the world had outgrown it; it was law no longer. In any 
event, it could not possibly be observed as such by any nation 
powerful enough to set it at naught. The case did not admit 
of argument. 

The course, therefore, to be pursued by the British Govern- 
ment under the circumstances which then confronted it, was 
simple, and exactly the course that was pursued. The matter 
was referred back to the law officers of the Crown, with in- 
structions to reconsider the subject. The subject was recon- 
sidered, and different conclusions arrived at. Nevertheless, 
those conclusions commend themselves little more to present 
judgment than the previous opinion. It was now held that 
what had been done in the Trent case was illegal because in 
assuming authority under the accepted law of nations, as laid 
down in the reports and treatises. Captain Wilkes had under- 
taken to pass upon the issue of a violation of neutrality on the 
spot, instead of sending the Trent as a prize into port for judi- 
cial adjudication. There is about the position thus assumed 
in 1861 something which seems in 1911 little short of the gro- 
tesque. Nevertheless, so the case stood at that time; and, as 
mere technical law, the point probably was, as the Duke of 
Argyll said in his letter to Mr. Adams, well taken. At any rate 
it met in a way the requirements of that particular occasion, 
and was gravely advanced and argued over pro and con by 
able and adroit men holding high official positions. It was, 
however, recognized all through as a solemn farce. As a 
question of practical statesmanship, the world manifestly had 



27 

burst asunder those particular swaddling clothes. It is con- 
tentions of this character which bring law into contempt. 

One more turn of the kaleidoscope, and I am through for 
this occasion. Leaving London and the legal advisers of Her 
Majesty's Government, we travel back to Boston. The San 
Jacinto, with the two Confederate envoys on board, — more 
guests of the Captain than prisoners of state,^ — steamed into 
Boston harbor on the 24th of November. Fort Warren had 
been designated as, pro hac vice, the American Tower, or Bas- 
tile. Fort Warren is situated on George's Island, commanding 
the main ship-channel, so called, at the entrance of Boston 
harbor. Small in area, the island is almost entirely covered 
by the fort; and, as is well known, the sea-shore of Massachu- 
setts Bay is, as a winter resort, inclement. Though, as already 
mentioned, both Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell were peculiarly 
obnoxious to the loyal North and especially to New Englanders, 
there were a number of residents of Boston who had in one way 
or another been personally associated with them in former 
times, and even under obligations to them. Among these was 
Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, long a member of Congress from Mas- 
sachusetts, speaker of the national House of Representatives, 
and, for a time, the occupant of a seat in the United States 
Senate. Those were the days of the comparatively "simple life " 
in Washington, and while in the Senate together Mr. Mason and 
Mr. Winthrop had belonged to the same *'mess," as the board- 
ing-house arrangements of those days were termed. As Mr. 
Winthrop now wrote in a familiar letter to Mr. John P. Kennedy, 
another of his Congressional associates, referring to the dedi- 
cation in 1857 of the statue of Joseph Warren in Bunker Hill 
monument, when he had introduced both Mr. Mason and 
Mr. Kennedy, — "His tone was insolent enough on that occa- 
sion,2 yet I will not triumph over him now. ... I sent down 
some sherry a fortnight ago, and offered to go myself, but the 
officer said I could speak to none of them. ... I also helped 
to get some great coats to prevent the North Carolina soldiers 
from freezing." There certainly was biblical authority for such 
action under these circumstances on the part of Mr. Winthrop. 
At the same juncture, it so chanced that Colonel H. Raymond 



l^ason, Public Life, 224, 225. 

But on this point see Mason, Public Life, 123-125. 



28 

Lee and Major Paul J. Revere, of the 20th Massachusetts Vol- 
unteers, were with other Massachusetts officers prisoners of 
war at Richmond. It cannot be denied that as such they were 
treated with great severity, almost indeed as if they had been 
common criminals. If, however, at that time any prominent 
citizen of Richmond, who had previously received attentions 
at their hands in Boston, had endeavored to alleviate the hard- 
ships of prison life, we can feel assured he would have been 
denounced by the Southern press as supplying luxuries to those 
who could only be compared with the minions of Attila or some 
other great barbarian destroyer. In those days somewhat 
exaggerated metaphors and comparisons were in over-common 
use, and, as will immediately be seen, history quite failed to 
supply either of the two sides with precedents or examples 
equal to the occasion's requirements. Until then the lowest 
depths of depravity had not been sounded; ''history did not 
record," etc., etc. ! And yet even at that juncture such Samaritan 
action as that suggested on the part of some Richmond resi- 
dent towards Lee and Revere would hardly have been regarded 
in Boston as conduct suitable for bitter denunciation only. 
Thus viewed, in alteram partem, it is curious now to read the 
bitter words in which the very simple courtesy of Mr. Winthrop 
and others was denounced by the New England press. The 
Boston Transcript, for instance, in its issue of Thursday evening, 
December 12, 1861, gave vent to the following growl: "We beg 
to suggest to those whom it may concern to leave the care of 
men, one of whom is the personification of arrogance, and the 
other of craft, to the proper authorities. We beg them not 
again to outrage public opinion by sending their champagne 
and other luxuries to the avowed enemies of the United States." 
And yet this merely echoed an utterance from Governor Andrew, 
conveyed in a private but published letter dated at the State 
House, December nth. Referring to what he termed "the 
numerous manifestations of misplaced sympathy by some citi- 
zens of Boston with the rebel prisoners confined at Fort War- 
ren," Governor Andrew then said: "I fully appreciate your 
feelings in this matter, and share with the writer of the Post in 
his condemnation of that sympathy with traitors, which makes 
men in comparison with whom Benedict Arnold was a saint, 
comfortable in their confinement, while our own brave defenders 



29 

of liberty and Union and the rights of man, are cut off from all 
such sympathy by the rigorous despotism of the Southern 
oligarchy, — but I do not know of anything that I can do to 
prevent it." When such utterances emanate from a man of 
the high character and natural kindliness of Governor Andrew, 
it is possible for those who did not, as well as for those who did 
live in those times, to imagine the grim murkiness, so to speak, 
of the language elsewhere heard. For example, here is an illus- 
trative extract from the newspapers of the time: "Mr. Wendell 
Phillips, in a lecture delivered at the New Music Hall on the 
evening of Wednesday, November 27, 1861, observed: 'If at 
the outbreak of the present troubles Breckinridge, Mason, 
Slidell, Toombs, Hunter, Wise, and others had been hung, and 
a frigate or two had been sent to Charleston, Savannah and 
New Orleans, and shelled those cities, there never would have 
been any rebellion.'" Mr. Phillips was never conspicuous for 
tolerance or for moderation of speech, nor could any marked 
degree of sanity of judgment be fairly attributed to him; it is, 
however, at this distance of time curious to learn that even he 
should in 1861 have so utterly misjudged the courage as well 
as the earnestness of the South. But in 191 1 it has an even more 
curious and exaggerated sound to hear John A. Andrew referring 
to the two Confederates in question as men in comparison with 
whom ''Benedict Arnold was a saint." Whatever may be said 
against either Mr. Mason or Mr. Slidell, — and much certainly 
can in both justice and truth be said, — it can never be asserted 
that they were guilty of treachery or of secret treasons. They 
proclaimed their opinions loudly enough, and thereon, early and 
late, "made good." Nevertheless, Mr. Winthrop's attitude 
towards them on this occasion excited so much feeling that he 
wrote to his friend Kennedy as follows: "A miserable clamor 
has been raised by a few of our bitter spirits because some per- 
sons have sent down a few creature comforts to alleviate the 
condition of old friends. One of our malignant presses calls 
us sympathizers in Rebellion and threatens to send our names 
to the Secretary of State ! I hope you will give Seward to under- 
stand that a malicious spirit of misrepresentation prevails in 
this quarter, which vents itself upon everybody who is not 
ready to embark in an Abolition Crusade. For myself, I have 
done so little for the prisoners, that I feel a compunction at 



30 

having seemed wanting in kindness. It is wretched policy not 
to treat them with humanity and consideration." This episode 
constitutes a mere insignificant footnote in the record of that 
period; but it brings forcibly to mind the morbid and unreason- 
ing state of public opinion. 

One point further, and a point curiously illustrative of the 
thoroughness with which this particular piece of historical 
ground has been gone over, and the difficulty of now reaching 
any novel conclusions in regard to those who played their 
parts in connection with it. As a final result of recent in- 
vestigations I had reached the conclusion that, among those 
occupying positions of prominence and political responsibility 
in American public life at the time, two only preserved their 
poise throughout the Mason and Slidell episode, and, taking 
in all the aspects of the situation, both acted with discretion and 
counselled wisely. These two were Montgomery Blair, the 
Postmaster General in Lincoln's Cabinet, and, somewhat strange 
to say, Charles Sumner. They alone, using the vernacular, did 
not "slop over," prematurely and inconsiderately committing 
either themselves or the country, whether in private speech or 
public utterance. Though not quoted at the time, Mr. Blair's 
attitude was the more pronounced. According to Secretary 
Welles, he "from the first denounced Wilkes's act as unauthor- 
ized, irregular and illegal"; and even went so far as to advise 
that Wilkes be ordered to take the San Jacinto and go with 
Mason and Slidell to England, and deliver them to the British 
Government.^ In view of the excitement and unreasoning con- 
dition of the public mind such a disposition of the question was, 
perhaps, practically impossible; though even this admits of 
question. Nevertheless, seen through the vista of half a cen- 
tury, this would clearly have been the wisest as well as the most 
dignified course to pursue, far more so than that ultimately 
adopted; for, as Secretary Welles, a dozen years later, wrote, 
"the prompt and voluntary disavowal of the act of Wilkes, and 
delivering over the prisoners, would have evinced our confi- 
dence in our own power, and been a manifestation of our in- 
difference and contempt for the emissaries, and a rebuke to the 

1 This course was, it is said, also at the moment advocated by General Mc- 
Clellan, then organizing the Army of the Potomac, and practically commander- 
in-chief in succession to General Scott. Russell, My Diary, ii. 405. 



31 

alleged intrigues between the rebels and the English cabinet." ^ 
Mr. Welles might have further remarked that such a disposi- 
tion of the matter, besides being in strict consistency with a 
long-proclaimed international policy, would have afforded for 
the navy a most salutary disciplinary example. 

As I have said, the attitude and bearing of Mr, Sumner 
throughout those trying days was above criticism. With a 
proper sense of the responsibility due to his official position, 
that of Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions, he was silent, biding his time; and, when that time came, 
he used his influence in such a way as to produce results not 
wholly unworthy of a great nation passing through a trying 
ordeal. This conclusion I had reached, and was prepared to set 
forth as one that might have a certain degree of novelty as well 
as weight, the matured judgment of half a century subsequent 
to the event. Fortunately for myself, before so doing, I glanced 
once more over the pages of our associate, Mr. James Ford 
Rhodes. In the chapter of his History (iii. 523-524) in which 
he deals with the affair of the Trent, I then found the following: 
— "Of all the men in responsible positions, Sumner and Blair 
saw the clearest. They were in favor of at once surrendering 
to England the Confederate Commissioners." 

My "novel" judgment, slowly reached at the close of half a 
century, had been, it would thus appear, anticipated by my 
associate here by about sixteen years' 

But there is another aspect of the Trent affair and its out- 
come, which, from the historical point of view, is, I believe, 
novel ; and that in closing I propose to bring to view, emphasiz- 
ing it as forcibly as I can. But in order to appreciate this 
aspect of the affair it is necessary clearly to bear in mind the 
sequence of events, the intervals of time which elapsed and the 
exact date of each occurrence. The arrest of the Trent and the 
seizure of the two envoys took place in the Bahama Channel, 
November 8; the interview between Lord Palmerston and 
Mr. Adams at Cambridge House, at which Lord Palmerston 
suggested that the presence of the two envoys in Europe was 

^ Lincoln and Seward (1874), 186-187. This was an opinion formed later 
and on more mature reflection. At the time of the occurrence of the "aEfair" 
the attitude of Secretary Welles was pronounced, and his utterances were pecu- 
liarly indiscreet as well as precipitate. See Diary, i. 299, 466, 490. 



32 

"of no consequence" and "would scarcely make a difference 
in the action of the government" was on the 12th, and the 
despatch of Mr. Adams conveying this most significant intima- 
tion to Secretary Seward was received by the latter before 
November 30. This was fourteen days after the news of the 
seizure had been made known in the United States (Novem- 
ber 16) and the public excitement had already begun to sub- 
side. Tidings of the affair had reached England three days 
only before, on the 27th, and the despatch of Earl Russell to 
Lord Lyons demanding the immediate surrender of the two 
envoys, dated November 30, reached Washington December 
18, or a little over a full month after the news of the seizure 
of the envoys had made wild the American public. 

At the time great emphasis was laid on the general prepara- 
tions for war entered upon by the British government in case 
of a refusal to yield to the ultimatum presented. It was here 
pronounced unnecessary, irregular, minatory, and insulting; 
and subsequent American historical investigators and publi- 
cists have continued to so pronounce it. There is no question 
that Great Britain was in dead earnest in its demand for imme- 
diate reparation, and acted accordingly. The arsenals were 
busy; all available forces were mobilized; troops embarked 
for Canada. 

And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, 

And foreign mart for implements of war; 

Why such impress of shipwrighters, whose sore task 

Does not divide the Sunday from the week. 

What might be toward . . . 

The answer was ready; as was then alleged, and has since 
been reiterated, it was on the part of Great Britain a case of 
uncalled for, unnecessarily offensive braggadocio and bullying; 
and it was resented as such. Yet something was, and is, fairly 
to be said on the other side. The critics were not careful as to 
their facts, the sequence of events and the natural operation 
of cause and effect. Again it is necessary to bear dates clearly 
in mind. Commenting on thisphaseof the "affair," R. H. Dana, 
for instance, with singular carelessness says in his elaborate 
note in his edition of Wheaton — "The news of the capture of 
Messrs. Mason and SHdell reached Washington about the same 



33 

time it reached London." ^ This is erroneous, and the error 
vitiates Mr. Dana's whole criticism on the minatory course 
pursued by Great Britain. The news of the seizure, not "cap- 
ture," reached Washington November i6; the same news did 
not reach London until the 27th, or eleven days later. Those 
eleven days of difference were pregnant with consequences; 
for during them the United States went crazy, and it was then 
that the news both of the seizure and of the storm of American 
approval thereof reached London "about the same time." 
The announcement a few days later of the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts at the Wilkes dinner in Boston (November 26) that 
"a shot fired across the bows of the ship that bore the EngHsh 
hon's head" had filled to the brim the cups of America's satis- 
faction over the event, followed hard by the "emphatic ap- 
proval" of the act of the Secretary of the Navy and its unani- 
mous endorsement by Congress — these surely were not utter- 
ances or incidents calculated either to allay British excitement 
or to lead to a countermand of warlike preparation. Even on 
the ver}^ eve of the surrender, it was pubhcly alleged and on 
excellent authority that the President had emphatically an- 
nounced: — "I would sooner die than give them up." This 
probably was not true; it was, however, believed both in 
Washington and in London. In London also it was suspected, 
especially in inner ministerial circles,^ — and on good grounds 

^ Wheaton, 654, n. 

2 The Duke of Newcastle, who had accompanied the Prince of Wales in his 
visit to America in the summer and autumn of i860, was at this time Colonial 
Secretary in the Palmerston-Russell gov^ernment. On June 5, i86r, five months 
before the occurrence of the Trent affair, he thus wrote in an official letter to Sir 
Edmund Head, Governor-General of Canada: — "I entirely concur in what you 
say in your letter of the 18th May about Mr. Seward's speculations and unfriendly 
views towards Canada, but I think you hardly make sufficient allowance for his 
hyper-American use of the policy of bully and bluster. When I saw him at 
Albany last October he fairly told me he should make use of insults to England 
to secure his own position in the States, and that I must not suppose he meant 
war. On the contrary, he did not wish war with England, and he was confident 
we should never go to war with the States — we dared not and could not afford it." 

On December 5th following, in the heat of tne excitement of the Trent affair, 
Newcastle wrote to Lord Monck, then in command of the forces in Canada: — 
"Soon after your last letter was written [November 16] you must hav-e learnt 
of the afi'air of the Trent, and the serious complications which it must produce. 
I am bound to warn you that war is too likely to be the result. Such an insult 
to oiu: flag can only be atoned by the restoration of the men who were seized 
when under its protection, and with Mr. Seward at the helm of the United States, 



34 

it has since appeared, — that Mr. Seward had, only a few months 
previously, desired to provoke trouble with Great Britain with 
ulterior purposes in view. The opportunity for so doing had 
now presented itself; nor was there any reason to suppose 
that the views of the Secretary had recently undergone change. 
Under such circumstances, however, it was perhaps in no way 
so remarkable, nor did it afford just ground for animadversion, 
that the din of preparation for war in the one country was con- 
current with the din of approval of the seizure in the other. 

Meanwhile the news of the excitement occasioned throughout 
Great Britain by Wilkes' act had reached America on the 12th, 
six days before the arrival of Russell's ultimatum. The dates 
necessary to bear in mind are therefore the i6th of November, 

and the mob and the Press manning the vessel, it is too probable that this atone- 
ment may be refused." 

To the same effect, WiUiam H. Russell wrote as follows to the Times: — "In 
the present temper of the American people, no concessions can avert serious 
complications very long, or the surrender of all the boasted privileges of the 
Civis Romanus. . . . 

"There is a popular passion and vengeance to be gratified by the capturing 
and punishment of Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell, and I beheve the Government 
will retain them at all risks because it dare not give them up, not being strong 
enough to do what is right, in the face of popular sentiment. ... I was much 
struck with the deep spirit of animosity displayed by some friends of mine, for 
whom I entertain a great respect, in speaking of the probable act of Great Britain: 
— ' If we are forced now in our hour of weakness to give up Mason and SHdell, I 
trust to God that every man in America will make a solemn resolve to let England 
feel the force of our resentment and an undying revenge when next she is involved 
in any difficulty.'" Letter of November 12, printed in the issue of the Times 
for December 3, 1861. 

"As I write there is a rumour that Messrs. Mason and Slidell are to be sur- 
rendered. If it be true this Government is broken up. There is so much violence 
of spirit among the lower orders of the people, and they are so ignorant of every- 
tliing except their owti politics and passions, so saturated with pride and vanity 
that any honorable concession even in this hour of extremity would prove fatal 
to its authors." From letter dated November 25, in the issue of the Times of 
December 10, 1861. 

The general understanding and accepted popular conviction in Great Britain 
was thus set forth in an editorial in the Illustrated London News' of December 14, 
1861: "While it is broadly stated on all hands on this side of the water that a 
restoration of the old Union is assuming the aspect of an impossibility, it has 
been whispered that such an opinion has secretly taken root in the minds of the 
Cabinet at Washington, and that a contest vnth England is adopted as a policy 
out of which may spring a pretext for the ultimate acknowledgment of the inde- 
pendence of the South. If this is really the case, why, all ground for argument 
is cut away, and it must be readily admitted that no course more calculated to 
attain that end could have been selected than that of bringing on a quarrel with 
this country." 



35 

when the news of the seizure reached America; the 27th, when 
the same news reached Europe; the 12th of December, when 
the extreme seriousness of the situation first dawned on the 
American mind through tidings of the British excitement and 
consequent demands; and, finally, the i8th of December, when 
it became apparent that a decision as to the course to be by it 
pursued had to be reached within one week by the American 
Government. Thus, between the date of the arrival of the 
San Jacinto at Hampton Roads (November 15), and the 
announcement from Washington that the envoys would be 
surrendered (December 26) forty days elapsed. This was a 
most important factor; for, as the result showed, during that 
period the popular effervescence had time in which to subside, 
while by the forty-first day the sober second thought might 
to a degree be invoked with some assurance of a response. 
An Anglo-Saxon community rarely goes daft permanently. 

It was so in this case; and, though both in public and pri- 
vate, some, Hke Hale of New Hampshire and Lovejoy of Illi- 
nois in Congress, and two of the sons of Mr. Adams in private 
correspondence, foamed at the mouth, swearing inextinguish- 
able hatred of Great Britain and asseverating an unalterable 
determination to bide their time for revenge on that arrogant 
and overbearing nationality,^ so far as the great body of public 



* The absurdities and excesses of speech into which the prevailing epidemic 
of excitement led people at this Juncture seem now simply incredible. For in- 
stance, one gentleman rushed into print proposing as a remedy for existing con- 
ditions that Mason and Slidell should at once be tried, convicted of treason, 
sentenced, and hanged, — this before Great Britain could formulate demands for 
their surrender. The whole difficulty, he claimed, would thus be disposed of. . 

The favorite formula, however, seems to have been of a Hamilcarian character, 
— that is, the swearing of one's offspring to eternal hatred. Of this there were 
many cases; for example, Mr. Lovejoy, a member of Congress, of Illinois, thus 
expressed himself on the floor of the House of Representatives on the afternoon 
of January 7, when the correspondence between Secretary Seward and the British 
Government, relative to the Trent case, were laid before the House: "I am made 
to renew the horrible grief which I suffered when the news of the surrender of 
Mason and Slidell came. I acknowledge it, I literally wept tears of vexation. 
I hate it; and I hate the British government. I have never shared in the tradi- 
tional hostility of many of my countrymen against England. But I now here 
publicly avow and record my inextinguishable hatred of that government. I 
mean to cherish it while I live, and to bequeath it as a legacy to my children 
when I die. And if I am alive when war with England comes, as sooner or later 
it must, for we shall never forget this humiliation, and if I can carry a musket in 
that war I will carry it. I have three sons, and I mean to charge them, and do 



36 

opinion was concerned the insanity passed away almost as 
suddenly as it had asserted itself. Reason resumed its sway. 

And yet, while this greatly to the credit of the American 
people proved in the outcome to be the case, at the time such 
grave doubt was felt as to the popular reception of the decision 
to surrender the envoys that they were actually smuggled out 
of Boston harbor, Provincetown being selected as the point of 
delivery to a British frigate. This was suggested by Mr. Seward 
to Lord Lyons as the better course, the Secretary being "ap- 
prehensive that some outrage would be offered by the populace 
to the prisoners and the British flag." No sufficient grounds 
in reality existed for any such apprehension, but at the same 
time a reliable correspondent wrote from Boston to Charles 
Sumner that ''the whole population were terribly excited, 
ready to plan any kind of an expedition to sink the vessel that 
should be sent to convey the Rebels from Fort Warren." ^ So 
general was this behef that Russell, the Times correspondent, 
then at Washington and in very direct daily communication 
with the best informed authorities, "resolved to go to Boston 
being satisfied that a great popular excitement and uprising 
will, in all probability, take place." - The dehvery did not, 
however, in fact, occasion a ripple of lawlessness. 

Such being the facts of the "affair" and the dates of the 
occurrences in its development, it is of interest now, and cer- 
tainly not without its value as matter of experience, to con- 
sider the courses then possible to have been pursued by the 
United States and to contrast them, coolly and reflectively, 
with that which was actually pursued. And in so doing the 

now publicly and solemnly charge them, that if they shall have at that time 
reached the years of manhood and strength, they shall enter into that war." 

To the same effect Captain Dahlgren, of the navy, vowed to Mr. Russell that 
if England should avail herself "of the temporary weakness of the United States 
to get back the rebel commissioners by threats or force, every American should 
make his son swear eternal hostihty to Great Britain." 

Finally, one of Mr. Adams' sons, writing to his father, expressed himself in 
the same vein, as follows: — "I at least would care to impress but one thing on a 
son of mine, and that should be inveterate, undying, immortal hatred of Great 
Britain. In this I do not feel that I am at all exaggerating the general feeling 
here." He wrote December 30, 1861. 

A curious collection might be made of utterances of the same import at that 
juncture. 

^ Works, vrn. 102. 

^ Russell, My Diary, 11. 428-429. 



37 

thought which first suggests itself is one not conducive in us 
to an increased sense of national pride. What an opportunity 
was then lost! How completely our public men, and through 
them our community, failed to rise to the height of the occasion! 
For, viewed in the perspective of history, it is curious, and for 
an American of that period almost exasperating, to reflect 
upon what a magnificent move in the critical game then con- 
ducted would have been made had the advice of Montgomery 
Blair been followed to the letter and in spirit. To carry out 
the simile, by such a playing of the pieces on the board as he 
suggested, how effectually a checkmate would have been 
administered to the game of both the Confederates and their 
European sympathizers! In the first place, the act of Wilkes, 
as was subsequently and on better reflection universally con- 
ceded, was ill-considered, improper, and in violation of all 
correct naval usage. It should have been rebuked accord- 
ingly, and officers should have been taught by example and 
at the commencement that they were neither diplomatic 
representatives nor judicial tribunals administering admiralty 
law. It was for them to receive instructions and implicitly to 
obey them. A reprimand of much the same nature was at almost 
this very time administered to General John C. Fremont, when 
in Missouri he undertook by virtue of martial law to proclaim 
the freedom of the slave throughout the mihtary department 
under his command. His ill-considered order was revoked; 
and he was officially instructed that he was to confine himself 
to his military functions, and that the administration reserved 
to itself all action of a political character. So much for Captain 
Wilkes, and the reprimand he should have received because of 
his indiscreet and unauthorized proceeding. 

Next, such a line of conduct would have been on the part of 
the Government in severe and manly adherence to the past 
contentions of the United States. It would have recognized in 
the action taken by Wilkes an attempt to carry the right of 
search and power of impressment far beyond any precedent 
ever established by the British Government, even in the days 
of its greatest maritime ascendency, and consequent arrogance. 
In the strong and contemptuous language of Mr. Adams, 
America, in sustaining Wilkes, was consenting "to take up and 
to wear [Britain's] cast-off rags." If, instead of so bedizening 



itself, the United States had boldly, defiantly, and at once now 
adhered to its former contentions, its attitude would have 
been simply magnificent; and, as such, it would have com- 
manded respect and admiration. 

Nor was this aspect of the situation wholly unseen by some 
at the time; for, writing from his post in London to J. L. Motley 
in Vienna on the 4th of December, 1861, the date at which 
the tension between the United States and Great Britain was 
at the breaking point, Mr. Adams thus expressed himself: "It 
ought to be remembered that the uniform tendency of our own 
policy has been to set up very high the doctrine of neutral 
rights, and to limit in every possible manner the odious doctrine 
of search. To have the two countries virtually changing their 
ground under this momentary temptation would not, as it 
seems to me, tend to benefit the position of the United States.^ 
Whereas, a contrary policy might be made the means of secur- 
ing a great concession of principle from Great Britain. Whether 
the government at home will remain cool enough to see its 
opportunity, I have no means of judging." And a few days 
later — December 7, 1861 — John Bright, writing to Charles 
Sumner, expressed himself to the same effect: "You may dis- 
appoint your enemies by the moderation and reasonableness of 
your conduct, and every honest and good man in England will 
applaud your wisdom. Put all the fire-eaters in the wrong, 
and Europe will admire the sagacity of your Government." 
"Sagacity of your Government!" That phrase expressed ex- 
actly what the situation called for, and got only in a very mod- 
ified degree. 

Taken immediately and openly in the presence of the whole 
world, the position advised by Blair would have indicated the 
supreme confidence we felt in our national power, and the pro- 

^ The timidity and hesitation with which Americans then advanced, for it 
cannot be said they really advocated, the traditional American policy, are fairly 
matter of surprise. For instance, in a letter to the London Times, printed in its 
issue of December 14, — a letter which Mr. Adams criticised at the time as 
being "a little too smooth and deprecating," — Mr. Thurlow Weed thus cautiously 
referred to the law as laid down by Lord Stowell: "Were I at all qualified to enter 
into the legal argument I should be inclined to accept your view of the question, 
to wit, that time and circumstances have so far changed the practice, reformed 
the principles of international maritime law as to render the earlier precedents 
and authorities largely inapplicable to existing cases." Memoir of Thurlow Weed, 
n. 354- 



39 

nounced contempt in which we held both those whom we called 
"rebels" and those whom they termed their "envoys." If 
reached and publicly announced after mature deliberation 
during the week which followed the announcement of the 
seizure from Fortress Monroe (November 23), as trans-Atlantic 
communication was conducted in those days the news would 
scarcely have reached England before the 3d of December, 
just three days after the peremptory and somewhat offensive 
despatch of Earl Russell demanding the immediate surrender 
of the arrested envoys was beyond recall or modification, well 
on its way to America. A situation would have resulted 
almost ludicrous so far as Great Britain was concerned, but, 
for the United States, most consistent, dignified and im- 
posing. Excited, angry, arrogant, bent on reparation or 
war. Great Britain would havei been let down suddenly, 
and very hard and flat. Its posture would, to say the least, 
have been the reverse of impressive. But for us it would 
have established our prestige in the eyes of foreign nations, 
and once for all silenced the numerous emissaries who were 
sedulously working in every part of Europe to bring about our 
undoing through foreign interference. In particular, the 
immediate delivery of the envoys, in advance of any demand 
therefor and on the very ship which had undertaken to exer- 
cise the right of search and seizure under the command of the 
officer who had thus exceeded his authority and functions, 
would, so to speak, have put the Government of Great Britain 
thenceforth under bonds, so far as the United States was 
concerned. Thereafter any effort, either of the "envoys" 
thus contemptuously surrendered or of other Confederate 
emissaries, would, so far as this country was concerned, have 
been futile. Reciprocity would from that moment have been 
in order, and all question of foreign recognition would have 
ceased. The whole course of international events in the imme- 
diate future would probably have been far different from what 
it was; for with what measure we had used, it would neces- 
sarily have been measured to us again. 

Such a Hne of conduct immediately decided on and boldly 
declared would have been an inspiration worthy of a Cavour 
or a Bismarck; but, though actually urged in the Cabinet 
meetings by Montgomery Blair, its adoption called for a grasp 



40 

of the situation and a quickness of decision which, very pos- 
sibly, could not reasonably be expected under conditions then 
existing. It also may even yet be urged that, if then taken and 
announced, such a policy would have failed to command the 
assent of an excited public opinion. That it would have failed 
to do so is, how^ever, open to question; for it is more than 
possible, it is even probable, that American intelligence would 
even then have risen at once to the international possibilities 
presented, and in that crisis of stress and anxiety would have 
measured the extent to which the "affair" could be improved 
to the public advantage. The national vanity would unques- 
tionably have been flattered by an adherence so consistent 
and sacrificing to the contentions and poHcies of the past. 
The memories of 1812 would have revived. However, admit- 
ting that a policy of this character, now obviously that which 
should have been pursued, was under practical and popular 
conditions then prevailing at least inadvisable, it remains to 
consider yet another alternative. 

Assuming that the course pursued remained unchanged an 
entire month after the seizure, and up to the 12th of December, 
when the news arrived in America of the excitement occasioned 
by the seizure in Great Britain and the extreme seriousness 
of the situation resulting therefrom, — assuming this, it is 
now obvious that the proper policy then and under such con- 
ditions to have been adopted, although it could not have 
produced the results which would have been produced by the 
policy just considered if adopted and announced ten days 
earlier, would still have been consistent and dignified, and, as 
such, would have commanded general respect. It was very 
clearly outlined by Mr. Adams in a letter written to Cassius 
M. Clay, then the representative of the country at St. Peters- 
burg, in the following month. He expressed himself as follows : 
— "Whatever opinion I may have of the consistency of Great 
Britain, or of the temper in which she has prosecuted her 
latest convictions, that does not in my judgment weigh a 
feather in the balance against the settled policy of the United 
States which has uniformly condemned every and any act 
like that of Captain Wilkes when authorized by other nations. 
The extension of the rights of neutrals on the ocean and the 
protection of them against the arbitrary exercise of mere 



41 

power have been cardinal principles in the system of American 
statesmen ever since the foundation of the Government. It 
is not for us to abandon them under the transient impulse 
given by the capture of a couple of unworthy traitors. What 
are they that a country like ours should swerve one hair from 
the line of its ancient policy, merely for the satisfaction of 
punishing them? " 

If the advisers of Mr. Lincoln had viewed the situation in 
this light, when his Secretary of State sat down to prepare 
his answer to the English demand he would at once with a 
bold sweep of the hand have dismissed as rubbish the English 
precedents and authorities, reverting to the attitude and con- 
tentions uniformly and consistently held by the Government 
for which he spoke, during the earlier years of the century. 
The proceeding of Captain Wilkes would then have been pro- 
nounced inconsistent with the traditions and established policy 
of the United States, and the line of action by it to be pursued 
in the case immediately presented would have been dictated 
thereby. The course to be pursued on the issue raised was 
clear, and the surrender of the envoys must be ordered accord- 
ingly; — and this in no degree because of their small impor- 
tance, as suggested by Lord Palmerston in his talk with Mr. 
Adams — though unquestionably the fact would have secretly 
exercised no little influence on the mind of the Secretary — 
and still less was it ordered because of any failure of Captain 
Wilkes to seize the Trent as prize on the ground of alleged 
breach of neutrality: but exclusively for the reason that the 
seizure in question was unauthorized, in direct disregard of 
the established policy of the United States and its contentions 
in regard to the rights of neutrals, clearly and repeatedly 
set forth in many previous controversies with the Government 
represented by Earl Russell. From that policy, to quote the 
language of Mr. Adams, "this country was not disposed to 
swerve by a single hair's breadth." In accordance with it, 
deHvery of the so-called "envoys" was ordered. 

Again, an opportunity was lost! Such an attitude would 
have been dignified, consistent and statesmanlike. It would 
have had in it no element of adroitness and no appearance 
of special pleading. It could hardly have failed immediately 
to commend itself to the good judgment as well as pride of 



42 

the American people, and it would certainly have commanded 
the respect of foreign nations. 

Of the elaborate, and in many respects memorable, despatch 
addressed by Secretary Seward to Lord Lyons, in answer to 
the categorical demand for the immediate release of the two 
envoys,^ it is not necessary here to speak in detail. It is his- 
torical, and my paper has already extended far beyond the 
limits originally proposed. Of this state paper I will therefore 
merely say that, reading it now, '"clever," not "great," is the 
term which suggests itself as best descriptive. Much commended 
at the time, it has not stood the test.^ In composing it, the 

^ In his official despatch conceding the surrender of the envoys, Mr. Seward 
observed that the British claim for reparation was not made "in a discourteous 
manner." A later writer, however, has referred to the "indecent haste and 
manifest unfairness of the whole proceeding, as well as the bombast and implied 
threats" contained in Lord Russell's letters to Lord Lyons. Without going into 
details on this subject, it may however be observed that, so far as the United 
States is concerned, the despatch in question, as respects either language or per- 
emptoriness of tone, would compare not unfavorably with the subsequent atti- 
tude and utterances of our spokesmen in the case of the difficulty of this country 
with Chili, as set forth in President Harrison's message of January 12, 1892, anent 
the assault on American sailors in Valparaiso; or with those of President Cleve- 
land as embodied in the memorable Venezuela message directed at Great Britain, 
December 17, 1895; or with those of President McKinley in his message of April 
II, 1898, communicating his ultimatum preceding the war with Spain; or with 
the course adopted by President Roosevelt in February, 1904, towards the United 
States of Colombia, as respects the independent Republic of Panama, proclaimed 
as per arrangement the day previous by a band of trembling conspirators. To 
the record in all these cases it is unnecessary in this connection more particularly 
to refer. 

2 A far harsher criticism must, however, be passed on the memorandum of 
Secretary Chase, read at the Cabinet meeting of December 26, 1861, and printed 
in Warden, Private Life and Public Letters of Salmon P. Chase, 393, 394. It was 
distinctly chilchsh; for Mr. Chase then said of Captain Wilkes' act: — "How- 
ever excused or even justified by motives, the act of removing [Messrs. Mason 
and Slidell] as prisoners from the Trent, without resort to any judicial cognizance, 
was in itself indefensible. We could not deny this without denying our history. 
Were the circumstances reversed, our government would, Mr. Chase thought, 
accept the explanation, and let England keep her rebels; and he could not divest 
himself of the behef that, were the case fairly understood, the British government 
would do likewise. ... It is gall and wormwood to me. Rather than consent 
to the liberation of these men, I would sacrifice everything I possess." It is 
hardly necessary to observe that it has not been the practice of either Great 
Britain or the United States to yield up political refugees, or "rebels" asking 
right of asylum, on the demand of any Government claiming their allegiance, to 
"keep her rebels." The Koszta case is here distinctly in point. Secretary Chase 
appears when writing this memorandum to have been somewhat oblivious of that 
precedent. 



writer plainly had his eye on the audience; while his ear, so to 
speak, was in manifest proximity with the ground. Indeed, 
his vision was directed to so many different quarters, and his 
ear was intent on such a confusion of rumblings that it is fair 
matter for surprise that he acquitted himself even as success- 
fully as he did. In the first place, it was necessary for him to 
persuade a President who had " put his foot down," and whose 
wishes inclined to a quite different disposition of the matter. 
In the next place, the reluctant members of a divided Cabinet 
were to be conciliated and unified. After this, Captain Wilkes, 
the naval idol of the day, must be justified and supported. 
Then Congress, with its recent commitments as respects ap- 
proval, thanks, gold medals, etc., had to be not only pacified, 
but reconciled to the inevitable; and, finally, an aroused and 
patriotic public opinion was to be soothed and gently led into 
a lamb-like acquiescence. The situation in the aspect it then 
bore, was, it cannot be denied, both complicated and delicate. 
Accordingly, one is conscious, in reading the Secretary's com- 
munication to Lord Lyons of December 26, 1861, of a distinct 
absence therein of both grasp and elevation. That '' bold sweep 
of the hand " before suggested, is conspicuous for its absence. 
The English and British precedents were by no means dis- 
missed as antiquated " rubbish "; while, on the contrary, our 
own earlier and better contentions were silently ignored. In 
their stead, British principles were adopted as sound and of 
established authority ; and thus the final action of the United 
States in delivering the, so called, envoys was rested on what 
the Duke of Argyll presently, and most properly, character- 
ized in his letter to Mr. Adams as " a narrow and technical 
ground." Captain -Wilkes, it was argued, while acting in 
strict accordance with law and precedent, had failed to seize 
the Trent as lawful prize, and as such, send her into an Am- 
erican port for adjudication. It was a complete abandon- 
ment of the traditional American contentions in favor of the 
arrogant and high-handed poHcies formerly pursued by Great 
Britain, but now by her silently dismissed as antiquated and 
inconvenient — " her cast-off rags " ! 

It can, therefore, now hardly be denied that there was 
more than an element of truth in the criticisms passed upon 
the Secretary's momentous reply to Lord Russell's demand 



44 

by Hamilton Fish, in a letter to Charles Sumner, written at the 
time, Mr, Fish, then in retirement, not impossibly entertained 
feeHngs of a nature not altogether friendly towards Mr, Seward, 
whose colleague he had been in the Senate, and whom later he 
was to succeed in charge of the Department of State, They 
were both from New York, and had been contemporaneously 
active in New York politics. Those also whose attention has 
been called to the grounds of comparison will, perhaps, hardly 
be disposed to deny that for natural grasp of the spirit and 
underlying principles of international law, Hamilton Fish was 
better endowed than either Seward or Sumner, Fish now wrote : 
— "In style [the letter] is verbose and egotistical; in argument, 
flimsy; and in its conception and general scope it is an aban- 
donment of the high position we have occupied as a nation upon 
a great principle. We are humbled and disgraced, not by the 
act of the surrender of four of our own citizens, but by the 
manner in which it has been done, and the absence of a sound 
principle upon which to rest and justify it. . . . We might and 
should have turned the affair vastly to our credit and advan- 
tage; it has been made the means of our humihation." 

The ultimate historical verdict must apparently be in accord- 
ance with the criticism here contemporaneously expressed. 
The Seward letter was inadequate to the occasion, A pos- 
sible move of unsurpassed brilliancy on the international 
chessboard had, almost unseen, been permitted to escape us. 




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